Over on his blog today, Coyote writes about tactical combat: fighting that involves more than a simple onslaught of spells and swords to blow away the enemy.

There’s been very little of this in recent RPGs, and even not-so-recent ones. As Coyote mentions, probably the best in regard to tactics were the gold box games from SSI.

Of course, SSI was known primarily for creating war/strategy games, so tactical combat in their RPGs was no surprise. It’s also no surprise there’s very little today, because you really need a group, and many games focus on a single character.

Even when you have a group, often your control is limited. It seems to be almost a standard that the party is composed of NPCs picked up along the way. You may be able to give them some basic commands, but precise directions are lacking.

Part of the problem is that combat takes place in real time, and that is a bad thing when you consider attack spells, especially those area-of-effect ones. Since the enemy is on the move, most will be out of the effect range by the time the spell goes off.

One way around that is the “fudge” of having offensive magic only affect the enemies. While better than nothing, it isn’t entirely satisfactory, either.

Tactical combat really works well only in turn-based systems. D&D, which started it all, was turn-based. You could be sure, when that fireball or stinking cloud or web spell went off, the enemy would be in the effect area.

For that matter, it works only when you can control what spells are going to be cast. You may have decided that slowing the opponents is the best move, but the NPC mage lets loose with a lightning bolt.

Melee isn’t much better. You might be able to set fighters to “attack strongest”. However, your idea of “strongest” and the designers’ idea are likely not the same. So Muscles the warrior goes running after the ogre, when you’d rather he beat on the mage.

The question to ask, though, is whether today’s gamers want a tactical system, as the old SSI games had. I suspect not. Fighting this way takes time, and I think many would be too impatient, especially given the number of combats in a typical RPG. Fast action has more appeal, and probably always will.

I loved the old SSI Gold Box games, precisely because of the tactical combat. Yeah, it took awhile, so there probably should have been fewer combat encounters, but I love both the tactics of party-based combat and the strategy (by which I mean planning your party composition).

Kings Bounty The Legend is the only thing I can really think of recently that had tactical combat. You controlled an army of four or more units, each with their own advantage and special abilities. There were a lot of combinations of units, fighters, ranged combat, and magic users such as a typical RPG. The battlefields had obstacles where you could channel the battles. Some units like a dragon could fly over the obstacles though. I thoroughly enjoyed the game and I am waiting for the expansion to come out.

Xian, King’s Bounty is more of a turn-based Strategy game to begin with. So, of course, it had tatical combat.

What Scorpia is talking about are true RPGs with tatical combat. But, methinks, the old Scorpia and the ole Coyote are forgetting an excellent RPG that just came out at the beginning of this decade. Anyone remember Wiz 8? Especially since the ole Coyote just played the game and wrote articles about it.

Maybe there’s reason for hope, Scorpia. Civilization has always been a strong seller and turn-based combat is at it’s core. And while it’s hardly an RPG, it shows that there’s still a demand for deliberate, thoughtful action in games.

Could the problem with turn-based tactical RPGs be that the combat is not presented in an overtly dramatic fashion? We ask for the stories to be dramatic, the characters to be dramatic, so why not the combat?

I don’t so much mean the abstract meta situation, by the way– I think Coyote was right, there are some folks who just haven’t been exposed to it and so won’t understand it enough to enjoy the tension right away. What I mean is that turn-based combat in most RPGs I’ve played is pretty cerebral, like a game of Chess. Lots of steak but little sizzle.

I think this is why so many designers have been opting for real-time. Nobody wants to be accused of being boring. If lightning and fireballs are flying and things are moving then there’s a sense of at least SOMETHING happening.

Are there any purely turn-based games that go beyond presenting the characters as chess board pieces on the game map? The only game I can remember that tried was the squad-based strategy game Incubation, which had some nice ideas about using character animation and camera movement to create drama. You might, for instance, see your squad from a horror movie style perspective of a monster hiding in the rafters or a creature might scream and leap over a wall landing behind one of your guys (just as he’s used all his darn action points!)

Coyote mentions the revival of miniatures in table-top gaming, so we know there’s an audience there. Maybe more dramatic tactical combat is what it would take to make this mode of play more palatable for the newer gamers of today.

Scorpia, don’t all of the D&D games that had tatical combat as well (those that came AFTER the gold box series). Such as Baulder’s Gate 1 and 2 and related games, (should I metion this one?) Pool of Radiance: Ruins, and Temple of Elemental Evil.

Also, I believe that Dragon age is suppose to be group tactical combat as well.

Kings Bounty was labeled a turn based strategy, but it really was more of an RPG with quests, leveling up, and skill trees. You really can’t compare it to a turn based strategy such as Civilization except for the fact that it was turn based. It’s gameplay is quite a bit different than the games that were descended from the original such as Heroes of Might and Magic.

Oh, I didn’t forget about Wizardry 8, but the game is getting kinda long in the tooth now… :) And besides, it’s sort of a bad example, anyway, because the combats in that game DID get pretty long and tedious for me.

Drakensang may be a good, more recent example. I haven’t played it yet, so I wouldn’t know. But at least it’s come out in the last five years… The hybrid real-time / “pause to make it turn-based” thing was never the strong suit to me for the Baldur’s Gate series – though it did allow some fudge factor to pretend to be the best of both worlds. But at least the trivial combats went by quickly. At least it provides a little more than the Diablo-wannabes.

Yeah Xian, from the demo I got the impression that this was more strategic than anything else.

Coyote, Wiz 8 did have some strategy to it. However, it also had first-person perspective; aside from the formation you chose, there was no moving around. Which annoyed many, as the monsters were all free-movnig units.

Presto, can’t say about TOEE because I didn’t play it. However, the BG games were in the “pick up NPCs” category.

Wavinator, exactly. In real-time, something is always happening. I don’t think presentation in turn-based would help all that much. We also have to keep in mind that there is so much fighting in RPGs that whatever you do, it will probably seem “old” after awhile. Of course, even real-time combat feels that way eventually ;)

I do agree that some “sizzle” in combat is nice, but that could happen with X-Com style combat, or turn-based combat in general, especially if it’s ranged combat. Personally, I always loved hearing the twang of a bow-string, and watching an arrow strike its target. And magic, or high-tech phasors, can be as showy as you want.

Heh – amusingly enough, I spent all last night working on the visuals for a new spell for Frayed Knights: “Power Word: Defenestrate.” I dunno if you’d call it sizzle, and it may not be quite as funny the hundredth time you cast it, but it amuses me to no end….

One day, I would like to do an X-Com meets D&D game. With every dungeon level being a full map, with intelligent, nasty AI that sometimes cooperates (and might sometimes fight each other). I don’t know if it would be any fun to play, but it would sure be fun to write.

Final point, King’s Bouty is one of those games that really blurs the differance between TBS games and RPGs. With Armored Princess coming up (which will increased the RPG elements) blurring the line even more.

But, King’s Bounty does fall in the same catagory as Heroes of Might and Magic, Warlords, Fantasy General, Fantasy Wars, Age of Wonders, etc.

Another game that really blurred the line between TBSs and RPGs games as well, was the D&D game, Dragonshard.

I’m quite sure that many RPGs of the future will be more like Dragon Age, D3, Drakensang, and Amored Princess.

Drakensang is not a very good example of tactical combat. It’s a hybrid and the “pause every turn” method suffers from it. It is far less competent than the systems that were present in BG1 & BG2. Characters always auto target and move some when they kill a target during their turn. It can be very frustrating because depending on how quickly they kill something, they move a fair bit before the turn ends, and so will anyone else who was attacking that same target. I believe I’m about halfway thru the game, and I am enjoying it, but the combat has several issues that are frustrating. Some of them are due to the system the game is based on and some are just the implementation chosen by the designers/programmers.

ToEE was a much more tactical game, and despite the many bugs present early on, it was near perfect in what I wanted and expected from a turn based system. I played the Baldur’s Gate games repeatedly, but only once with the pick up NPCs. Quirky characters are well and good for fun, but when you get to the meat of combat you want a character that is built to do their job well instead of going against the grain. *eyes Minsc knowingly* The multiplayer option allowed me to create all manner of interesting group compositions.

Oddly enough, I am not at all fond of the new 4E D&D. It’s much more of a tactical miniatures game than a roleplaying game, but it’s not what I was hoping for in many aspects. However, one thing is VERY apparent… the ruleset is perfectly designed for translation to a computer environment. I am, quite frankly, stunned that there is not already a 4E tactically minded game out for PC and/or console.

I’m in the same boat with the odd, Darkbridger. I’m not a big fan of 4E, even though it makes the game far more… uh… tactical.

The issue for me is that I enjoyed the D&D miniatures game greatly, but the tactics that I enjoy are more of the icing on the cake, or the spice, rather than necessarily the meat. Many encounters are more RP-oriented or really not worth pulling out the minis for. But when they do come out, we know it’s going to be an interesting fight.

And maybe that’s what I’m looking for. Something where the tactics are there, and can get deep some of the time, but don’t overwhelm the game.

Presto, yeah, I know. But I suspect most people who played BG did so with the in-game NPCs. And yes, I did play through with my own party (except for Imoen, the only NPC I ever liked). It was a lot better that way.

DB, always auto-target? You can’t give instructions? Sounds awful. As for 4ed, it seemed to me when I looked over the rules (didn’t buy them), that this was “WOW offline”. Duno if I’d want to play a computer version based on them, though I’m sure we’ll see a few coming along.

Let me clarify. At the beginning of the turn (just after the game pauses) you can issue commands to a party member. This includes targetting specific enemies and using specific abilities. However, if a party member kills that target during the turn, they will then automatically select a new target and move toward it. You can override that when the next turn starts, but the character may move anywhere from 2 to 8 paces toward the target it selected during the turn. What they should have done was disable auto-targetting if “pause-at-the-end-of-every-turn” is enabled.

Also, my point with 4E being ideal for computerization has to do with ease of development and (hopefully) the ability to focus more time on the story and characters. 4E itself would lend itself very well to a(forgive the terminology) “dumbed down” RPG that could draw in new players and still posses enough complexity to appeal to tactical combat fans. Just because WotC hasn’t put enough of the role playing flavor in their mini wargame doesn’t mean a competent computer developer couldn’t one up them in that department. While I think it could produce games capable of drawing in a younger audience, the draw of older gamers (of either CRPGS or PnP D&D) would probably be more minimal.